La Jolla Half Marathon

a new PR, YEAH!!!!

This morning I woke up from a nightmare...I dreamed that I finished in 1:43 but that I never crossed the finish line, I got lost! hahahaha! Obviously, I'm nervous about running a course I'm unfamiliar with.

Today promised to be a perfect race day. It was 51 and overcast at the start line. 51 is fine when you are running...freezing when you are just standing around. Thank goodness Mike had the day off. It was so, SO nice to have him there with me. He hung out until 7:00 and then had to leave before they closed off the road for 45 minutes.

The starting area was pretty packed...elbow to elbow and very warm. I wish I had earplugs as I almost had a major noise overload meltdown. I was really looking forward to the National Anthem but they never played it. grrrr. We did observe a moment of silence for the VTech victims and families and also for our service men and women...that moment ended abruptly as Super Freak started playing. LOL. I don't think that was the plan!

So I started out weaving through the crowds. Those first 2 miles were tight. The next couple miles took us through some baby-hill teasers in Del Mar. Del Mar spectators are almost as sparse as San Dieguito spectators. blah! It's beautiful heading down that long stretch of beach with Torrey Pines looming in the distance. I was feeling strong and decided to eat it up. I was passing people left and right and let out a wild banshee cry of victory half way up! With that out of the way, I was ready to face the last half of the race. The long downhill coming down by Scripps was scary fast. I did a 6:49 going down and could.not.stop.myself. All in all the last 6 miles were all 7minute miles so I felt great. I came up around the corner of prospect and saw Mike. He got a great shot of me catching air...I was bookin it in a full on dash that last quarter mile. Check me out.


So I finished strong with that last downhill and landed on the grassy finish line. I wanted to finish happy, I finished THRILLED! 1:44:58 that's an 8:01 average pace! I plug that into my marathon predictor calculator and it gives me a sweeeeeeeeeet cushiony Boston Qualifying time. So I finished with my first ever, post race free beer! Cheers!



and my standings...

Field Placement: 496 / 4572 (10.8%)
Age group: 35 – 39
Group Placement: 15 / 403 (4%)
Gender Placement: 95 / 2362 (4%)

woo hoo!!!